


We're Just Getting Started (Reprise)

by TheDeadButcher



Category: Watch Dogs 2 (Video Game)
Genre: heed the major character death thing, if this is how watch dogs 2 goes i'm going to break something
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 08:26:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7307605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDeadButcher/pseuds/TheDeadButcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marcus is very sure of what he is willing to do in order to continue his work with Dedsec and it can only lead to the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We're Just Getting Started (Reprise)

**Author's Note:**

> not BETAed or reread but it's five am and i need to sleep. if this is how the game goes then ubisoft better hire me.

There’s a gun in his hand. A real one. Not the taser his “family” at Dedsec has so kindly gifted to him. Not the Thunder Ball which he had lost somewhere in the fight. His laptop case had been smashed as well, insulin shot being the only survivor (fuckin’ Fate). His phone is dying in his pocket and there’s a mess across the floor. There’s a body on the floor too. 

He takes a deep breath and slips to the floor, throwing his glasses aside to rub his palms into his eyes. He digs deep, hoping that this is some sort of twisted nightmare. That he’s going to wake up with Sitara yelling at Wrench in the other room. That Josh is going to be sitting in the sofa, peeking up from his phone and trying to ignore everyone around him. Marcus wants that to happen because that kind of crazy family-not-family is better than the unreality that had just taken place. 

Marcus is not himself when he dials 911. He is not himself when he moves to stand. Drops the gun. Retrieves his broken laptop case with its surviving insulin. Picks up his glasses. He is not himself as he takes the crane thirty stories down into the low rises of local shops and hops across rooftops until he can hear the sirens pass him by. The sun rises and he rests behind a billboard for an hour. 

The story runs smoothly in his head. The heists had gone well. They were making a big name for Dedsec and themselves. People were actually starting to pay attention to the corruption going on around them. Thruss was voted out of office, a nationwide investigation was going into Invite, so-called surveillance systems were being double checked for fraud. Dedsec was doing what it had to do and Marcus had always thought that it would be within the scope of what he deemed to be just. 

And, shit, Dedsec was really starting to seem like a good home to him. He could settle into this. Sitara and Wrench watched his ass like a pair of hawks to make sure he didn’t get his ass beaten. Josh watched from the background, always double checking to make sure ctOS was either properly disabled or accounted for. Family. He would have called them family. 

And then Wrench beats a cop to death. 

And then Sitara shoves a guy down an elevator shaft. 

And then Josh fucks with a stoplight and two cops are killed in the crash. 

This was all done to ensure the continuation of Dedsec. To ensure that hacktivism continued to be the trending topic in the Bay Area, in all of California. For some time, Marcus went along with it. He did. There was nothing else he could have done. Going against them then would have only quickened the pace at which it all fell to shit. 

Josh dies one night scouting a small time gig. Marcus and Sitara had known that Josh wasn’t used to that kind of work, but Wrench was out doing another scouting and they needed to get it done. Josh bleeds out on the fourth floor balcony of an unfinished apartment complex. A cop had caught him sneaking in, recognized his Dedsec gear, and had shot him in the leg. There were no ambulances. 

They sat down. They had talked about Josh’s death. That was it. There was no closure, no sense of completion. One day his room was filled with his things and the next day it wasn’t. 

A week later Wrench handed him a gun. A real gun. It was heavy in his hands. Cold. It hadn’t been a gift. 

“They want us dead. They killed one of our own. You can’t play nice anymore, Marcus. I’m sorry, that’s just the way it has to be.” 

Marcus couldn’t do anything but shake his head. He’d tried to hand the gun back, but Wrench had forced it on him. He’d talked about burdens, about obligations, about the voice of the people Marcus felt they were not longer speaking for. 

He breaks away from his rumination long enough to run over the details of the next heists. Sitara being uncharacteristically quiet, Wrench pushing for Marcus to use a more lethal approach, the heists getting more in more muddled. More armed guards, more security lock downs, more black outs, and more times that Marcus has to fight against the system he helped build long enough to ensure no one is hurt. 

Sitara drops off the grid. Marcus liked to think she probably saw what Dedsec was becoming, saw that she was playing into that and decided that it just wasn’t right. Or, and this is what he doesn’t like to think about, she knew what it would come down to and ran from that shit as soon as she got wind of the path they were taking. By the time she left it was already the end. 

He met Wrench on the roof of the same apartment complex Josh had been killed in. Their meet ups had always had awkward pauses and silences but, Marcus had grown accustomed to them. It wasn’t awkward so much as hostile to sit there in silence. 

“… Sitara left.” 

“I know.” 

“I… Think we should too.” 

Wrench had fixed him with a cold glare before shaking his head. “No one leaves the cause lives to talk about it.” 

“I’m leavin’.” 

Wrench had bolted up and had looked ready to beat the shit out of him. He was violent. He had been fucked up after Josh’s death. They should have stopped for a bit. For just a little while. They should have talked about it more. 

“No you’re not. No one leaves.” 

“Look, I can’t do what you’re askin’ me to do. I can’t go in guns blazin’ and hurt people who might not even know what their doin’. Do you think every security guard is in on the big underground shit of this city?” 

Wrench reeled back and hit him hard in the stomach. The memories fade to a struggle, hands around his throat, Wrench nearly screaming, there’s a crack (his laptop), another crack (the mask), and the final crack (a bullet). 

Wrench bleeds out like Josh, gurgling through his broken voice only this time, Marcus can watch. 

He sits there behind that billboard and thinks about the months prior to this mess. The family that could have been, the hope that could have survived. The people’s voice couldn’t survive through violence, Marcus knew that. He also knew that he couldn’t stay in San Fran anymore. Probably even had to leave California. 

Marcus waits until the last sirens fade out before making his way down the fire escape. The building they stayed in together isn’t ransacked. He changes, patches up, eats, and packs. Charge phone, new laptop (he presses tape to the webcam, to the sides too), and a ticket. 

Marcus does not look back when he leaves for the train station. He does not take one final look over the city he once admired and thought he was saving. He doesn’t say good bye to anyone. 

There are no more bodies in Marcus Holloway’s future but he never rests easy. 


End file.
